By Valder Beebe
The Summer Travel Rebound is here and Airbnb is making travel easier. As pandemic restrictions gradually lift, travel is looking different. Travelers are shifting from traveling at all the same time to all the same old places, to many of them living anywhere, at any time, for however long. For me, I queried the experts for answers, Liz DeBold Fusco is a Communications Lead for North America for Airbnb.
According to Airbnb’s recent Report on Travel & Living, this travel rebound is not a temporary reaction to these many months of restrictions and isolation, it’s a step toward a world in which living and traveling are one and the same. With 200 million date-flexible searches since the start of the year and bookings in 94,000 cities in the 12 months ending April 30, 2021, this shows that people are less tethered and more flexible on when, where, and for how long they can travel.
Inspired by this major travel shift, Airbnb is upgrading their service to make it easier for people to integrate travel into their lives, and for more people to become Hosts. Liz shares from the report key travel trends around who’s traveling, where they’re going and for how long. Liz DeBold Fusco publicists provided text in conjunction with the Valder Beebe Show
VBS: We’re coming off this travel rebound, it’s been quite a year. What changes can we expect?
LDF: After a year of isolation we all want to travel. The pandemic has created a major shift in travel, actually the biggest change in travel since WWII.
VBS: The changes in travel can be seen in how people are traveling, living and working, the lines are blurring.
LDF: Yes, the lines are blurring in three key ways; people are more flexible about when they travel, people are traveling to more diverse destinations like small towns and rural areas. And, people are staying longer at their destinations because with technology they can work anywhere.
VBS: With all this travel, what is happening with the hosts? Did the survey reveal?
LDF: Our Airbnb hosts have been on the front lines of these changes. The average host earned about ninety-seven hundred dollars this year, about seven times more than the stimulus checks. This has been an economic lifeline to our hosts. According to our survey of Airbnb…….
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